Practice, Concerts & workshop

Since Sundays transport debacle, where the train never turned up after waiting over an hour in the rain and cold I never actually made it to the Shala and had to practice at home instead, I have managed 3 mornings in a row before work, managing to do a full practice , play with Pasasana and stand up from half a block.

Thursday I had a rest day, being the 7th in my sequence and also after a very late Wednesday night, which was a great night at Alanis Morissette’s London concert. Her final song on the second curtain call being “Thank you india”.

I had thought about restarting on Friday morning but I didn’t wake up, but no rest for the wicked as I did a 2 hour backbend workshop at Shiny HQ with EG in the evening. In may have been about the back, but it was a killer on the legs, inward rotations of the thighs with blocks between the legs, toes in, heals out etc etc. A belt round the arms while holding a block against the wall to open the upper back and shoulders, her aim to teach us to stay out of the lower back when doing backbends, to lengthen and use the whole spine and engage the right bit of the legs at the right time.Core strength is needed to lift the hips from an internal muscle. Our IT bands being tight meaning it’s harder to engage the internal abductor muscles. We need to turn off the IT band in order to turn on the inner thighs and drop the tail bone down. The workshop ended with us laying over thickly rolled up mats as she went round pulling our arms back and stretching us out. It all makes sense and our lower backs did nothing, which was the point, I just hope I can remember some of it next time I practice .

6 Responses to “Practice, Concerts & workshop”

I idolised Alanis when she released Jagged Little Pill – which I have on cassette! Definitely need to get more of her albums.

Good on you for your dedication despite cancelled trains and penalty shoot outs keeping you up at night. I’m currently loving and cursing how exciting Wimbledon’s getting – now they can play later than 10pm this puts paid to my early nights!

Jagged Little Pill is still a great album, I still have it on tape too.

I went to Wimbledon every year between 1978-1995, but there were more characters playing then and you could pay “Ground admission” and run to get in the “free standing” on Centre Court, I saw some great players. I don’t find it so enthralling now.

I definitely see the argument about characters, and the style of play – and as well as the lack of free standing, the roof on Centre might have put paid to the ‘People’s Sundays’, which is a real shame. I still love it though, and watch or listen to as much as I can. My parents now have debenture tickets so they go every day, watch every point on Centre, and are complete experts on all the players (and are very scornful of the other ticket holders who only watch a set or two of each match, then wander off for more food/Pimms!).

I was there yesterday! Thanks to the rain (and with sympathies to those who’d got tickets for no. 1 court) my Dad and I saw three and a bit of the women’s quarter finals. It was fab.
Tour de France has never appealed to me so much, but I do think it would be fabulous to actually be there, and even more so of course if you know a bit about it and get all caught up in the excitement.